New Delhi: Jobs in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), Army, Territorial Army and Assam Rifles at the rate of Rs 8 lakh per person, a fake website of the Eastern Railways, forged joining letters for the posts of ticket collector and gateman — these are the broad findings of the preliminary enquiry opened by the CBI into a suspected recruitment racket.
A sepoy housekeeper, a craftsman in the Army and a ward sahayika (helper) of the Army’s Udhampur command hospital among others have been booked in the case, registered on a complaint by the defence ministry. They are yet to be arrested.
According to the CBI’s findings, sepoy Bablu Chauhan from Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur colluded with craftsman Akash from Punjab’s Gurdaspur and ward sahayika Chanchala Devi to run the alleged scam.
The agency has booked a total of 10 accused including the trio and Chauhan’s wife Ranjita Devi under sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) linked to 170 (personating a public servant), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (use of forged document as genuine) of the IPC as well as section 7(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, which deals with whoever takes undue advantage to influence a public servant. Section 66 D of the IT Act, which deals with the offence of cheating through a communication device, has also been invoked.
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‘Scam’ ground zero: An Army unit in Rajasthan
According to the findings of the preliminary inquiry, accused Chauhan was informed by his brother that some men from their hometown Gorakhpur could arrange jobs in the Territorial Army for a bribe of Rs 5.5 lakh per person.
Chauhan was posted at 298 field workshop, an Army unit in Rajasthan’s Nasirabad, at the time. It is here that he came in contact with craftsman Akash and allegedly shared his plans of duping people on the pretext of arranging jobs in the Territorial Army (TA).
Chauhan, however, hiked the bribe amount to Rs 8 lakh and Akash further shared the plan with ward sahayika Chanchala Devi. “Akash offered to get her nephew Pawan Kumar appointed in TA. Chanchala Devi agreed and offered to arrange money through her nephew and also some other aspirants desirous of getting jobs in the Territorial Army and other government organisations,” the CBI said in its preliminary findings.
According to the FIR, lodged 28 June, Akash met sepoy Chauhan again in Delhi in January 2020 after the latter’s transfer. After Akash’s assurances of enough clients, Chauhan allegedly proceeded to his hometown to lure job-seekers.
The CBI further claimed that Chauhan approached several people, and between January 2020 and August 2022, Rs 1.43 crore was deposited in his and his wife Ranjita Devi’s bank accounts.
“Significant fund transfers and cash deposits in the accounts of Sepoy Bablu Chauhan and his wife were found to have originated at Kathua, Thill Rown, Udhampur, Samroli and Jammu in J&K and Hindaun, Kota and Jaipur in Rajasthan, where such candidates resided,” the CBI FIR noted.
Forged joining letters, fake website
The CBI further alleged that Chauhan later changed his modus operandi of promising jobs in the Territorial Army citing the Covid lockdown, and began to instead offer posts in the Food Corporation of India and Railways.
In August 2020, many who had struck deals with Chauhan, including Chanchala Devi’s nephew Pawan Kumar, reached Allahabad to join jobs in the FCI but were instead taken to the Allahabad High Court where their education certificates were taken along with signatures on stamp papers.
In January 2021, they were called to join work at the FCI depot in Kanpur, but Chauhan kept delaying the joining process and began demanding more money, according to the CBI. Three candidates were asked to deposit Rs 50,000 each to his accounts.
The agency further alleged that candidates called to join at the FCI depot in Basti were further asked to deposit Rs 10,000 each. But after a week, Chauhan told them the vacancies had already been filled.
Chauhan and one of his aides, Rahul Dravid, took another 15 job-seekers to Kolkata where they were allegedly issued fake medical certificates in a bid to convince them that they had been selected for jobs in the Railways. The CBI claimed that Chauhan even made Dravid’s uncle pose as a divisional railway manager of the Eastern Railways.
Chauhan once again hiked the bribe amount and asked these candidates to pay up more — Rs 9 lakh for group D posts and Rs 10 lakh for group C posts, for which three people, identified as Pawan, Anil and Deepak, paid him.
The CBI alleged that Chauhan and his accomplices also created a fake website and forged joining letters of Eastern Railways to further dupe the job-seekers, even embedding barcodes and roll codes on the letters. Pawan was shown as hired as a ticket collector (TC) and Anil and Deepak as gatemen.
According to the probe findings, Chauhan even got them enrolled in a fake institute for 45 days of ‘training’, the agency said, after which Chauhan demanded another Rs 5 lakh from Pawan for the TC blazer and badge, which he refused to pay.
Pawan, Anil and Deepak asked Chauhan to take them to the offices where they would be working, but the latter refused. Another job-seeker, Sanjay Kumar, even turned up at the office he was shown as posted to, and was thrown out by railway officials who said his joining letter was fake.
How the ‘scam’ was discovered
According to the CBI, Chauhan had promised another crop of job-seekers from Jammu posts in the Indian Army for Rs 8 lakh and called them to West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri. There he again arranged for fake medical tests and got Rs 1 lakh bank deposits from the job-seekers, including one Akshay Kumar, a relative of Chanchala Devi.
Chauhan demanded another Rs 1 lakh from them for purported letters of recommendation. After payment, they were taken to the Army cantonment area in Kankinara, where they were denied entry. Chauhan then told them to pay the remaining amount of Rs 5.5 lakh and said the joining process would take 2-3 days.
However, this group of job-seekers refused to transfer the remaining amount, and after threats from Chauhan, demanded their money back. Their complaints blew the lid off the alleged scam. Based on a complaint from the vigilance department of the defence ministry, the CBI registered a preliminary enquiry in April.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)